Generation and Selection Of Actions For Entities In A Video Delivery System

ABSTRACT

In one embodiment, a method generates actions for entities found on a video delivery system based on information for user behavior of a user on the video delivery system and generates probabilities for the actions for the entities based on the actions for the entities and the user behavior. A probability for an action indicates the probability the user would select that action for an entity when compared against other actions in the set of actions for the set of entities. The method then selects an action feed based on the probabilities for the set of actions. The action feed includes at least a portion of the actions for the entities. The action feed is outputted to the client for display on an interface where an action on an entity in the action feed is performed by the video delivery system when selected by the user on the interface.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation application and, pursuant to 35U.S.C. § 120, is entitled to and claims the benefit of earlier filedapplication U.S. application Ser. No. 15/399,702 filed Jan. 5, 2017,which claims priority to U.S. Provisional App. No. 62/323,235, entitled“Contextual Generation of Actions for a Watch List of Entities in aVideo Delivery System,” filed Apr. 15, 2016, the contents of all whichare incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Television (TV) broadcast has been a medium where users were responsiblefor tracking content and scheduling their lives around the schedule ofshows on the TV broadcast. As a result of this reactive nature of the TVbroadcast, users miss content that they would not miss otherwise if theywere given a chance to watch it. Some reasons for missing content can bethe user not being available to watch the content at a certain time (andhaving to manually program a digital video recorder (DVR) to record thecontent), or not knowing that the content is being broadcasted or isavailable for only a short period of time. Also, in the case that thecontent is indefinitely available—simply not knowing that the contentexists. For example, a user may have a favorite actor, and that actormay appear as a guest actor in a single episode of a TV show. The usermay never have watched a TV show, and may not be interested in watchingthe whole TV show at the moment, but it is possible the user would watchthat one episode and see how the actor performed if the user knew of theepisode. With how current TV broadcast works, the user would have tofind out independently that the actor appeared in the episode, searchfor the episode, and then record or watch the episode when the episodeis broadcasted at a certain time. The user always has to know theschedule, manage the schedule, and track events.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 depicts a simplified system for generating and providing anaction feed according to one embodiment.

FIG. 2 depicts a more detailed example of an action feed generatoraccording to one embodiment.

FIG. 3 shows a graph of entities and the relationships between theentities according to one embodiment.

FIG. 4 depicts an example of an entity-to-content matching processaccording to one embodiment.

FIG. 5A depicts an example of the ranking process used by an actionranker according to one embodiment.

FIG. 5B depicts a table of entities and actions that have been rankedaccording to one embodiment.

FIG. 6A depicts a more detailed example of the action feed generator fordisplaying an action feed according to one embodiment.

FIG. 6B depicts an example of a table that is used to store the selectedactions according to one embodiment.

FIG. 7 depicts an example of the action feed being displayed on a userinterface of a client according to one embodiment.

FIG. 8 depicts a simplified flowchart of a method for generating anaction feed according to one embodiment.

FIG. 9 depicts a simplified flowchart of a method for displaying theaction feed according to one embodiment.

FIG. 10 depicts a simplified flowchart of a method for responding to aselection of an action in the action feed according to one embodiment.

FIG. 11 depicts a video streaming system in communication with multipleclient devices via one or more communication networks according to oneembodiment.

FIG. 12 depicts a diagrammatic view of an apparatus for viewing videocontent and advertisements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Described herein are techniques for a system to generate actions forentities. In the following description, for purposes of explanation,numerous examples and specific details are set forth in order to providea thorough understanding of particular embodiments. Particularembodiments as defined by the claims may include some or all of thefeatures in these examples alone or in combination with other featuresdescribed below, and may further include modifications and equivalentsof the features and concepts described herein.

Particular embodiments generate and rank actions for entities instead ofjust suggesting content on a video delivery service. An action feed isgenerated that includes actions for entities that have been rankedagainst other actions for entities. Then, at least a portion of theactions can be displayed to a user via a user interface. For example,entities can be television (TV) shows, movies, people, genres, topics,sports teams, events and so on. Actions may include watch-specificactions and non-watch-specific actions, such as watch actions, followactions, try actions, etc. Some examples of watch actions are “StartWatching Show #1”, “Resume Watching Show #2”, “Watch Trending Clip fromShow #3”, and “Watch a Sports Game Live”. Some examples of non-watchactions include “Remind Me to Watch Event #1”, “Follow Actor #1”, and“Try No Commercial Add-on Package”. Particular embodiments may use areal-time context for a user and generate a ranking of actions forentities that are suggested to a user to perform at that current time.Then, at least some of the actions are provided to the user.

Overview

FIG. 1 depicts a simplified system 100 for generating and providing anaction feed according to one embodiment. System 100 includes a serversystem 102 and multiple clients 104-1 to 104-N. Other components of avideo delivery network may also be appreciated, such as content deliverynetworks, but are not shown. Also, server system 102 may includemultiple servers and any number of clients 104 may be used.

A video delivery service may use a video delivery system 106 to providecontent to users using client devices 104. Although a video deliveryservice is described, the video delivery service may provide contentother than videos. For example, the video delivery service may include alibrary of media programs (e.g., videos, audio, or other forms ofstreamable content). Users may watch media programs that are availablein the library through video delivery system 106 at any time. Thelibrary includes different kinds of media programs, such as movies,shows, shorts, clips, trailers, etc. The shorts, trailers, and clips maybe shorter versions or previews of movies or shows. Movies are releasedonce whereas shows include episodes that may be released (or initiallyaired) on a set schedule during seasons. For example, the multipleepisodes for the shows may be released daily, weekly, or on anotherschedule. Typically, the shows may be released seasonally, that is, aset number of episodes for a show may be released during a season, suchas a four-month season during which an episode is released every week.

In the video delivery service, the content that a user can request isbeing refreshed regularly. For example, shows may include episodes that,when in season, are released onto the video delivery service weekly,daily, or in other intervals. This means the content is not stale.Although video delivery system 106 may provide shows that releaseepisodes on a schedule, video delivery system 106 allows users torequest the shows on-demand, such as once an episode for the show isreleased, the user may watch the episode at any time. This may bedifferent from a user watching shows on a cable television system. In acable television system, once the episode of the show is aired, the usercannot watch the show on demand unless it is offered on demand or theuser recorded the show using the DVR. However, the cable televisionsystem may not receive an indication when a user watches the recordedshows on the DVR. But, for the video delivery system, the user needs torequest the show from the service to watch the show. Also, a system thatreleases only single videos (e.g., movies) or all episodes for a show atonce does not have the recurring timing information of when a user viewsreleased episodes week after week (or any other release schedule).Accordingly, the video delivery service faces a unique situation whenreleasing episodes of a show and also being able to record when a userwatched the episodes. This allows the video delivery service to readcontextual actions of the user with respect to entities (e.g., videos)on the video delivery service. Also, the videos released may be from acable broadcast from content sources that then provide the videos to thevideo delivery service for release. Further, video delivery system 106may provide linear television via the same service. The lineartelevision may be similar to the cable television system describedabove. However, the linear television options can be blended with ondemand options in an interface 112.

In one embodiment, the availability of both on demand and live optionsmay complicate the recommendation process. That is, there may bedifferent options for a user to watch content, such as there may be alive version and an on demand version of the same content. Additionally,a third option where a user records some content (like a digital videorecorder) may also be available. Particular embodiments solve thisproblem by ranking actions for entities instead of just determining whatcontent is relevant. This allows recommendations for content that can bedelivered differently to be ranked together.

An action feed generator 108 may generate an action feed 110 thatincludes actions for entities that each user may display on userinterfaces 112-1-112-N. An entity may be something in which an actioncan be performed in the video delivery service. The entity may besomething that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object, actuallyor potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or virtually. Forexample, a TV show may be a video entity; an actor, director, or anotherperson associated with the TV show may be a person entity; an adultanimation may be a genre entity; a specific movie may be a movie entity;a specific user may be a user entity, and so on.

Action feed generator 108 uses a ranking of actions for entities againsteach other to determine a personalized order of actions for entities foraction feed 110. Action feed generator 108 may then provide apersonalized action feed 110 to each user on each user interface 112.Action feed 110 may include actions in a predicted order that actionfeed generator 108 thinks the user will want to perform at a given time.

To generate the actions, action feed generator 108 detects patterns inhistorical user behavior on the video delivery service, and ranksactions that fit into this behavior higher. As a result, action feedgenerator 108 can recommend actions to users as the actions areavailable, and not just full TV shows and movies that are related withthe past shows and movies the user has watched.

Action feed generator 108 can display suggested actions to the user inseveral different categories or areas of user interface 112. When userinterface 112 is discussed, it will be understood that this may be theinterface displaying pages for an application, the application itself,and/or the physical interface on client 102. When a page is referred to,it will be recognized that this could be a section of the page. Therecan be pages in user interface 112 that contain categories of entities.When the user navigates to the page, a suggested action for each entitycan be presented. The user can then take the action with a selection,such as a single selection, or the system can automatically take theaction itself—starting playing without user engagement. In anotherexample, the core surface point can be a dedicated area of userinterface 112. When users turn on their client device 104 for the videodelivery service, the users can be immediately presented with one ormore suggested actions in a dedicated area of user interface 112.Another surface point can be the media player experience itself. By wayof example, while the user is watching a piece of content (e.g., aftertaking a previous action), the user can browse through alternativeactions Likewise, once the user reaches the end of a piece of content,action feed generator 108 can suggest what to do next, in other wordswhat action to take next, and even automatically take the top suggestedaction on behalf of the user—creating an autoplay experience. Forexample, a user watching Show #1 and nearing the end of a particularepisode can be suggested the actions “Continue Watching Show #1”, “WatchAnother Adult Animation”, “Watch Movie #1 (movie saved for later by theuser)”, and action feed generator 108 can automatically take the firstaction—playing the next episode of Show #1. Thus, when action feed 110is discussed, it will be recognized that this could be a distributedlist where the suggested actions in the action feed may be displayed invarious different areas within the user interface 112 or may bedisplayed as a single list. Also, action feed generator 108 canproactively reach out to the user outside of the experience as well. Forexample, notifications can be sent out when an extremely relevant ortime sensitive action is available. The system can be integrated withoperating system (OS) and platform assistants and/or feeds.

Action feed generator 108 may personalize the action feed for every userof the video delivery service. For example, if a user #1 is using client#1, a personalized action feed #1 is displayed in a page for that user.For another user #N, client #N displays a personalized action feed #Nfor that user. This requires that individual user behavior be monitoredand incorporated into the action feed generation process, which will bedescribed below. Building action feed 110 may require action feedgenerator 108 to filter a large amount, such as tens of thousands ofpotential actions (at least one for each user and entity combination),down to a limited number of actions—even one. The video delivery servicealso has a large number of users, each of which need a personalizedaction feed generated. This means an automated process of generating theaction feed is needed. The following will describe the different partsof the action feed generation in more detail.

Action Feed Generator

Storage Description

FIG. 2 depicts a more detailed example of action feed generator 108according to one embodiment. Action feed generator 108 sources differentinformation to generate actions for entities. For example, informationfrom an action storage 202, an entity/relationship storage 204, userinformation storage 206, and campaign storage 208 may be used togenerate actions. The information in each storage may be historicaland/or real-time information. Real-time information may be informationbased on a current context for a user, such as the time of day, whatpage the user is viewing on interface 112, a selection by a user, etc.The information in each storage device will be described first and thenhow the information is used will be described.

Action storage 202 may store actions that can be associated withentities. The action describes a potential interaction between a userand the video delivery service. In one embodiment, actions that a usercan perform on the video delivery service, such as with a remotecontrol, may be eligible as an action in action storage 202. The actionscan include both watch actions and non-watch actions. This is differentfrom providing an icon of a video in which only one function isassociated with the icon and the selection of the icon ultimately leadsto watching the video. For example, the watch actions may includedifferent types of watch actions whereas only one function is associatedwith the icon. The examples of actions may include categories, such aswatch, save for later, follow, set a reminder, and go to a destinationwithin the video delivery service. Each action category may have moregranular actions described within it, such as “start watching”,“continue watching”, “watch latest episode”, and “watch live” areexamples of watch actions in the watch category. Additionally, in thego-to actions category, the actions of “go to news hub” and “learn more”may be examples of non-watch actions. Although these actions aredescribed, these are only examples, as other actions may be appreciated.

Examples of actions include continue watching actions, actions overfollowed or favorite entities, action-over-trends, recommended actions,and promoted actions. The actions may include watch and non-watchactions. For example, the non-watch actions may include follow, add anentity, or search for an entity.

The continue watching actions may generate actions for a user to resumewatching a specific piece of content or continue watching a serial pieceof content. For example, the action may be resume watching a movie thatthe user has not finished or continue watching a television show bywatching the next episode.

Actions over followed or favored entities may be actions over entitiesthat are specifically followed and/or favorited by the user. These areentities that have been specifically tracked by the user, such as theuser has watched, favorited, or followed the entity. These actions mayinclude watch the latest episode of show #1, watch a sports team vs.another team live, watch a recent interview with a person #1, watch thelatest news on a current event, and so on.

The action-over-trends may generate actions that capture somethingtrending. This may include any type of trend that the video deliveryservice determines by either mass engagement on the video deliveryservice, calling of current events on the web, or trending events thatare input into the video delivery service. Some examples ofactions-over-trends include watching a trending clip of a show, watch alive current event, or start watching a premiere for a televisionseries.

Recommended actions generate actions to introduce new content to theuser based on the user information, such as the user's interests,tastes, and habits. This includes start watching a television showbecause the user is a fan of the creator, watching the season finale ofthe television show because the user is into reality TV, or watching amovie because the user typically watches a movie on a Friday night.

Promoted actions generate actions that are promoted based on the videodelivery service campaigns, such as campaign goals, sponsorships, orup-sales. By including promoted actions, then the entities that areincluded in active campaigns are considered as being surfaced as anaction for a user.

Entity/relationship storage 204 may store entities and theirrelationships. To suggest actions for entities, relationships amongentities are needed. An entity may be a video that can be played, butmay be something other than a video. For example, a TV show may be anentity; an actor, director, or another person associated with the TVshow may be a person entity; an adult animation may be a genre entity; aspecific movie may be a movie entity; a specific user may be a userentity, and so on.

A relationship connects two entities. For example, a user #1 who watcheda show #1 may have a “watched” relationship between the user #1 entityand the show #1 entity. Relationships may also have properties, such asthe timestamp of when show #1 was watched for the watched relationship.Additionally, relationships themselves may be entities, and thus therecan be a relationship between entity and a relationship or between tworelationships. For example, a new show can mention a guest appearance ofa celebrity in a talk show, and this would be a “mention” relationshipbetween the new show and the “appeared in” relationship between thecelebrity and the talk show. An example of a relationship between tworelationships would be an actor in a show being influenced by anotheractor in another show in an “influenced by” relationship between the two“acted in” relationships.

User information storage 206 may store a user profile, user context,user behavior, and inferences. The user information is a collection ofdifferent information about the user, which may be historicalinformation or real-time information from a current session when theuser is using the video delivery service. Each user may havepersonalized information stored in user information storage 206.

The user profile may include information that the video delivery serviceknows about the user. This information may be determined through variousmethods. For example, the video delivery service may receive the userprofile information directly from the user in the form of questionnaires(e.g., during the registration experience), through explicit feedbackfrom the user (e.g., whether a user likes or dislikes a video), or canbe inferred from user behavior. The user profile information may becategorized into different categories, such as interests, tastes, andhabits. In one example, interests may be entities that the user shows anaffinity towards, such as various shows, actors, television networks,sports teams, etc. The interests may be further categorized byseparating inferred interests from interests explicitly stated by theuser through a mechanism in the video delivery service, such as a followor favorite mechanism. The taste information is an abstraction overproperties of entities the user is interested in, such as variouscomedies, movies, sports, etc. Habits are recurring behavioral patterns,such as what a user watches in the morning, weekend, at night, etc. Auser profile may not change based on context. That is, the user profileinformation does not change whether it is 9:00 a.m. or 9:00 p.m., theweekend, or the user is in a different location.

The user context is a situation on the video delivery service associatedwith the user in real-time. For example, the user context may be thetime of day, day of the week, the geographical location of the user, thedevice the user is using, the video the user is watching, etc. The usercontext may be determined during the session in which the user is usingthe video delivery service. Although the user context is described asbeing stored, the user context may be automatically determined and doesnot need to be “stored” in user information storage 206.

The user behavior is a collection of user actions that were performed bythe user. This also includes the lack of actions, such as the userdecided not to start watching a video. Other user behaviors include theuser started watching a video, searched for a video, navigated to atelevision show page, but did not watch the video. Inferences may beconclusions reached by action feed generator 108 by observing userbehavior in a given context. Inferences lead to learning and theselearnings may influence the user profile in interests, tastes, andhabits.

Campaign storage 208 may store campaigns for the video delivery service.For example, a campaign may promote an entity, such as a media programor product. The campaign may include start and end dates, impressiongoals, and current progress. For example, the video delivery service mayreceive money for promoting a media program. The campaign may specify anumber of impressions that are required for the campaign.

Candidate Action Generation

Using the above information for storage 202-208, a candidate actiongenerator 210 generates candidate actions that are possible for a user.Candidate actions are possible actions that can be applied to entitiesbased on a context associated with the user. For example, candidateaction generator 210 generates actions that can be applied to entitiesat the current time based on current (or future) availability of theentities on the video delivery service. To generate the candidateactions, candidate action generator 210 may generate an entityrelationship graph using the entities and relationships fromentity/relationship storage 204. Then, candidate action generator 210may perform an entity-to-content matching process to determine candidateactions for entities.

FIG. 3 shows a graph 300 of entities and the relationships between theentities according to one embodiment. In one embodiment, graph 300 mayrepresent any content that may be shown regardless of whether or notthat content is available on the video delivery service. Graph 300includes entities that may not be available on the video deliveryservice because there may be relationships between entities currently onthe video delivery service and entities not currently on the servicethat may be drawn, or there may be relationships to future availability.

In one embodiment, every entity in graph 300 is unique. For example, at302, a show #1 is a unique entity, and at 304, person #1 is a uniqueentity. Graph 300 may be a visualization of a subset of entities andrelationships that provides the available possible entities andrelationships. For example, a show #1 at 302 may have a relationship 306of “has an episode from” season 10, episode 8 (S10, E8) at 303. Further,show #1 may have a relationship 307 of “created by” a person #1 that isshown at 304. Then, the person #1 may also have a relationship 308 of“appeared on” a television episode of season 3, episode 57 (S3, E57) ofa television show #2 at 310. Television show #2 at 312 also has arelationship 313 of “has episode from” the same episode of S3, E57.Further, a movie #1 at 314 may have a relationship 316 with person #1 inthat person #1 created movie #1.

Candidate action generator 210 uses graph 300 to understand whatpossible entities/relationships could occur whether or not the entitymay be available on the video delivery service. Then, candidate actiongenerator 210 uses an entity-to-content matching process that associatescertain types of entities in the entity-relationship graph with actualcontent that can be requested by a user using the video deliveryservice. For a video title, the video delivery service may have severalsources for viewing the video, such as on-demand and linear. Further,different sources might require different entitlements, such asdifferent subscription levels for the video delivery service. Candidateaction generator 210 uses the entity-to-content matching process todetermine which entities are available for a user to watch. Theavailability may be availability at a particular point in time, pastavailability, or future availability.

FIG. 4 depicts an example of an entity-to-content matching process 400according to one embodiment. Entity-relationship graph 300 is shown witha content pipeline 402 for the video delivery service. Content pipeline402 may describe the content that is available at the current time or inthe future on the video delivery service. For example, the entity ofshow #1, which has an episode of season 10, episode 8 is available incontent pipeline 402 in different forms. For example, at 406, theepisode may be available on-demand. This means a user can currentlyrequest the episode at any time. Further, at 408 and 410, the episodemay be available via linear delivery, such as the episode is availablelive on a Channel #1 at a first time #1 at 408 and available live on aChannel #2 at a second time #2 at 410. Candidate action generator 210determines the entities at 406, 408, and 410 when performing theentity-to-content matching process 400.

Entity-to-content matching process 400 uses current availability duringthe candidate generation, but future availability is also considered.That is, although some entities may not be currently available, it ispossible that these entities may be available in the future on the videodelivery service. For example, although television shows, people, etc.are entities that do not have corresponding videos (unlike televisionepisodes or movies), candidate action generator 210 can traverse therelationships in graph 300 and generate actions over these entities ifthey have relationships to watchable entities that are linked to theavailable video. For example, if a person #1 appears in a televisionepisode and the video for that television episode is available, theaction can be over person #1 and could suggest the video with person #1in it.

Referring back to FIG. 2, after performing entity-to-content matchingprocess 400, candidate action generator 210 can generate candidateactions for the available entities. Candidate action generator 210 canuse the available entities determined by the entity-to-content matchingprocess 400 in addition to the user information from user informationstorage 206 to determine candidate actions for entities. For example,when a user logs on to the video delivery service, or at other pointswhile the user is using the video delivery service, candidate actiongenerator 210 may generate candidate actions based on the user profileand also the context of the user. The candidate actions may be generatedat other times also, such as when the user navigates to a different pageof interface 112. The candidate actions may not all be seen by the user,but candidate action generator 210 may determine they could qualify aspotential actions to surface to the user.

In one embodiment, candidate action generator 210 can determine entitiesa user may be interested in and also generate actions for the entitiesbased on what content is available via entity-to-content matchingprocess 400. In one example, candidate action generator 210 may use amachine-learning predictor to generate actions for the entities. Inanother example, rules may also be used in addition to or in lieu of themachine-learning predictor. In one embodiment, candidate actiongenerator 210 can generate the possible actions for entities based onthe user watch behavior on the video delivery service and a real-timeuser context. For example, candidate action generator 210 may predictwhether a user is interested in an entity the user has interacted withbefore, predict whether a user will take a certain action on aninterested entity the user has interacted with before, and/or predictwhether a user is interested in a new entity when the user navigates toa page on interface 112. In other embodiments, candidate actiongenerator 210 may determine whether there is an available action for anentity based on the entity's status without taking into account specificuser behavior. For example, if a trailer is released for a movie, thenthe entity/action pair might be watch the trailer for the movie.

In the rules-based predictor system, candidate action generator 210 mayuse user behavior to predict a user is interested in an entity. Forexample, candidate action generator 210 predicts a user is interested ina show if the user has completed one episode. The entity-to-contentmatching process indicates which shows are offered on the video deliveryservice and also metadata for the shows, such as the actors in theshows, number of episodes, etc. Then, candidate action generator 210 maygenerate a set of actions for the show, such as watch the latest episodewhen a new episode (assuming the user is caught up with all releasedepisodes) or watch the next episode if there is a second releasedepisode for the show.

In the machine-learning predictor system, candidate action generator 210may predict whether a user is interested in different types of entities,such as shows, movies, genres, actors, directors, networks, etc. Forexample, candidate action generator 210 may use the user behavior andinformation for the available entities to predict whether a user wouldre-engage with these entities from user behavior on the video deliveryservice, such as video views and also metadata for the entities. Also,with the help of the entity/relationship graph, connections between auser and an entity that have not been engaged by the user can be drawn.Based on connections, candidate action generator 210 may recommend newentities and appropriate associated actions (Follow “Actor A”, Follow“Election 2016”).

The machine-learning predictor may first be trained using historicaluser behavior (e.g., user actions, such as browse behavior, watchbehavior, and search behavior) on the video delivery service and theinformation for the available entities. This trains a model to predictwhether a user would re-engage with an entity based on the user'sshort-term or long-term engagement with related entities. These entitiesmay include shows, which may be television shows, manually-followedentities, and other entities. If the predicted probability ofre-engaging with an entity is higher than a predefined threshold, thencandidate action generator 210 may consider this entity as an entity theuser is interested in.

In one embodiment, candidate action generator 210 selects a first set ofentities that the user has engaged within a time period (e.g. the last 3months). Candidate action generator 210 may also determine whether theprobability of the user re-engaging with the entity is above athreshold. Also, candidate action generator 210 selects a second set ofentities the user has not engaged with (e.g., with the last 3 months orever), but are highly related to what the has engaged before. Candidateaction generator 210 determines the second set of entities dynamically,based on a context for the user, such as the time of the day,geo-location, if the user has just finished watching a show, or othercontextual information.

After selecting the entities, candidate action generator 210 generatesaction candidates for the predicted entities. In one embodiment, allpossible actions are applied, such as the actions are ones that can beapplied to the entities at the current time or a future time. In anotherembodiment, candidate action generator 210 predicts what actions theuser might use to re-engage with the entity. For example, watch actionsmay be associated with the show that has available episodes to watch fora specific user. For manually-followed entities, the action may be watchthe entity from the beginning. Other actions may be recommended forentities that the user may be interested in, such as follow an actorthat is associated with a show the user watched. Candidate actiongenerator 210 may then output the predicted possible actions for theentities. It is noted that entities may have multiple actions that couldbe applied. The actions output by candidate action generator 210 arereceived at action ranker 212 for ranking.

Action Ranking

After generating candidate actions over entities, an action ranker 212ranks the candidate actions against each other. Action ranker 212 mayrank the actions themselves against each other instead of rankingcontent against content. That is, the action of watching a televisionepisode may be ranked against the action of watching a movie, instead ofranking the television show vs. the movie. The ranking of actions allowsaction ranker 212 to factor in user context effectively and capturehabits. This is different from ranking a movie against a televisionshow, and requires a different type of predictor to perform the ranking.For example, action ranker 212 may recommend an action such that theprobability of the user selecting the action in the current context ismaximized. Further, action ranker 212 may recommend an action such thatthe downstream value of the user taking the action is maximized. Thedownstream value may be some value of the user taking this action at alater time. This value may be quantified on the video delivery service.For example, not only does the video delivery service want to provide anengaging experience to a user currently using the video deliveryservice, the video delivery service would like to provide a contentstrategy for promoting its content organically in the future. Forexample, an action the user might most likely take is watching acommonly available television show. However, an exclusively availablecritically acclaimed show might be slightly lower in the probability ofthe user currently taking that action, but would have a much higherdownstream value in that the user might continue to view this morevaluable show later. In this case, the critically acclaimed show mightbe ranked higher. The actions also go beyond suggesting that a userwatch a video as non-watching actions are included in the rankingprocess with watch actions.

FIG. 5A depicts an example of the ranking process 500 used by actionranker 212 according to one embodiment. Action ranker 212 may includemultiple rankers that can rank entities. The process of ranking may takeinto account information from entity/relationship storage 204, userinformation storage 206, and campaign storage 208. This information isused to generate candidate actions for entities as was described above.The candidate generation process will not be described again, but thespecific information used to generate candidates for each ranker isdescribed. For example, user information storage 206 may include userbehavior, manually-added entities, and engaged entities shown at 502,504, and 506, respectively. As discussed above, the user behaviors inthe past include browse, search, watch, follow, and save behaviors. Theuser behavior is used to determine manually-added entities 504 andengaged entities 506. Manually-added entities 504 are those entitiesthat a user has manually added, followed, or saved. Manually-addedentities 504 may be explicitly added by the user. Engaged entities 506may be those entities that a user has watched, searched for, or browsedover. The engaged entities may be implicitly expressed by the user.

Content relevance at 508 stores relevance between two pieces of contentor two entities. This is used to determine if a user is interested inone media program, the user might be interested in another mediaprogram.

At 510, the content availability is the availability of contentincluding when the content premieres, expires, and what time slot thatlive content is going to be provided. The content availability isdetermined from the entity/relationship storage 204. The contentavailability may be provided for all combinations of geo-location andvideo delivery service package types. That is, some content may beavailable in certain locations and some content may be available indifferent packages offered by the video delivery service.

At 512, the campaign information may be retrieved from campaign storage208. The campaign information may be information on campaigns that arebeing run relating to a certain entity. The campaign informationincludes the start and end dates, impression goals and current progress,and also actions that can be taken for the entity that is the subjectfor the campaign.

Action ranker 212 receives the candidate actions for the informationretrieved from storage 502-512 at the different rankers. The rankers areconfigured to receive actions for entities and automatically generate aprobability a user would select each action. Because of the nature ofthe user using the video delivery service and navigating to differentareas of interface 112, the rankers need to be used to automaticallygenerate the rankings so the actions can be surfaced to a user inreal-time. An example of a ranker that can be used will be described inmore detail below.

A re-engagement ranker 514 receives the manually-added entities 504 andengaged entities 506. Then, re-engagement ranker 514 ranks actions forthe entities for which the user has knowledge. This ranks theprobability that the user would select the action for an entity that theuser has explicitly added or taken action on before.

A discovery ranker 516 receives the engaged entities and contentrelevance information. Discover ranker 516 ranks actions for theentities for which the user does not have any knowledge. For example,the engaged entities are used to determine relevant entities that arerelated to the engaged entities. Discovery ranker 516 discovers theentities based on entity/relationship graph 300.

A campaign urgency ranker 518 receives the campaign information and canrank the actions for the campaigns. In one embodiment, campaign urgencyranker 518 may rank an action for a campaign based on an urgency scorefor the campaign. The urgency may be how important it is to receive animpression for the entity at the particular point in time. The higherthe urgency score is, the more urgent the campaign is. The score may becomputed based on the campaign goals and the current progress. Forexample, the campaign goal may be 1 million impressions in 1 week, andthe current progress may be 100,000 impressions after 3 days. This maymake the importance of receiving an impression for this campaign moreurgent than if 800,000 impressions had already been received.

The output of re-engagement ranker 514 and discovery ranker 516 is inputinto a user entity relevance ranker 520. Additionally, user entityrelevance ranker 520 receives the content availability. Then, userentity relevance ranker 520 generates a unified ranking of the inputswith each of the entities' actions being ranked based on a probabilitythe user would select each action. That is, the explicit actions andimplicit actions are ranked against each other. In one embodiment, theexplicit actions and implicit actions can be combined using differentmethods. For example, re-engagement ranker 514 and discovery ranker 516output probabilities within the same range (e.g., between a range of[0,1]) and thus the actions are comparable. In other examples, theprobabilities from one of the rankers may be normalized such that theprobabilities for both rankers are within the same range afternormalization. Once the probabilities are in the same range, user entityrelevance ranker 520 can unify the ranking in a descending orderaccording to the probabilities output by the previous rankers (e.g.,re-engagement ranker 514 and discovery ranker 516). Another way ofunifying could use a pre-specified ratio of re-engagement vs. discoveryto merge the ranked list from the previous rankers according to theratio. For example, with a 3:1 ratio, user entity relevance ranker 520selects the three highest ranked actions from re-engagement ranker 514,and then selects the single (1) highest ranked action from discoveryranker 516, and then selects the next three highest ranked actions fromre-engagement ranker 514, so on. Other considerations may also be usedto unify the ranking, such as user entity relevance ranker 520 canpromote an action based on some context, such as special treatment canbe made when user entity relevance ranker 520 looks at the user'sbehavior, e.g. when the user has finished one show, then the ratio ofdiscovery item can be increased.

A campaign ranker 522 receives the campaign urgency ranking along withthe content relevance and content availability. Then, campaign ranker522 may rank all campaigns with relevance between the content and thecampaign with the urgency considered. For example, the relevance of thecontent for the campaign being promoted along with the contentavailability is used to rank actions for all the campaigns.

Then, a mixed ranker 524 receives the user entity relevance ranking andthe campaign ranking. Mixed ranker 524 can rank a final list ofrecommended entities with associated actions from campaign ranker 522and user entity relevance ranker 520. Mixed ranker 524 may unify therankings from campaign ranker 522 and user entity relevance ranker 520in a similar way as described with respect to user-entity relevanceranker 520. For example, campaign ranker 522 and user entity relevanceranker 520 may output probabilities for actions within the same range of[0,1] that are ranked together, or use any of the other methodsdescribed.

Each ranker discussed above may use a predictor to rank actions. Eachdifferent predictor may rank a different set of actions, but may usesimilar a ranking process. The ranking process will be described withrespect to action ranker 212, but may be used by each ranker describedin FIG. 5A.

In one embodiment, action ranker 212 may use a machine-learningpredictor. Also, a rules-based predictor may also be used in addition toor in lieu of the machine-learning algorithm. For the rules-basedpredictor, action ranker 212 may rank the actions using historical userbehavior on the video delivery service. The historical user behaviordata may be associated with the user, and/or be associated with otherusers on the video delivery service. That is, data may be aggregated formany users using the video delivery service and used to predict aranking for the actions for entities. Action ranker 212 then appliesrules to the real-time context to rank the actions for the entities.

For the machine learning predictor, action ranker 212 may be trainedwith previous user behaviors from the past. Each behavior can beinterpreted as an action on a specific entity. All the actions,associated with a context when the user took the action, form thepositive samples. Negative samples are those at the same context thatwere eligible to be taken by the user, but were not taken by the user.The training process tries to find the predictor with the bestdiscriminative power to differentiate positive samples from negativeones, using a prediction process, such as multi-layer neural networks,decision tree or logistic regression. As a result, candidate actiongenerator 210 outputs a value for a specific action, which is thepredicted probability that the action would be taken by the user. Theremight be more than one action eligible for a user to take on an entity,but action ranker 212 may only output the action with highest predictedprobability for each entity. However, action ranker 212 can also outputmultiple actions for entity.

In one example, the trained predictor includes a function f(u, e, a, c),which outputs a value between a range (e.g., [0,1]), where u is the user(including information about the user's past behaviors up to a certaintime point), e is the entity, a is an action, and c is the real-timecontext (time of day, geo-location (e.g., location information), devicebeing used, seasonality, day of the week, current status of the user(e.g., just finished a show episode), etc.). Action ranker 212 retrievesthe information that is needed or receives the information dynamicallyin real-time. The lower the value output by the predictor, the lesslikely the user is predicted to take the action, and the higher thevalue, the more likely the user is predicted to take the action.

When given a set of pairs of form (e, a) for a certain user u in thecontext c, the predictor evaluates all values of f(u, e, a, c). Then,action ranker 212 ranks all the (e, a) pairs according to the evaluatedvalues. For each entity e, only one (e, a) pair may be retained in thefinal results, namely, only the most probable action for an entity isretained. However, multiple actions may be used. In addition torelevance, a user's negative feedback may also be used by action ranker212 to adjust the ranking.

In one embodiment, the inputs for the entity, user, or context to thepredictor may be based on any combination of:

-   Attributes of the entity (e).-   Availability change for the entity (e).-   The user's context (c).-   The user's affinity to the entity (u).-   The user's recent behaviors (u).-   The user's habits on the video delivery service (u).

The attributes of the entity may include information about a video, suchas when a show is releasing episodes, when the last episode wasreleased, what episode the user last watched, etc. The availabilitychange may be if any availability on the video delivery service mightchange, such as the episode or movie may be scheduled to be removed fromthe video delivery service. The user's context is based on variouscharacteristics for the user, such as the device being used to accessthe video delivery service, the time of the day, the day of the week,etc. The user's affinity to the entity may be how much the user likesthe entity, such as whether the user has watched a related video, likedthe director or other director's movies, liked the show, etc. The user'srecent behaviors may be what actions a user has recently taken on thevideo delivery service, such as manually added/followed a video, watcheda video, etc. The user's habits may be actions a user typically takes onthe video delivery service.

Action ranker 212 may generate probabilities that a user will take anaction for an entity by ranking the actions for entities against eachother. For an entity that the user has not previously performed anaction with, candidate action generator 210 may infer the probability bythe relevance between this entity/action and entities the user has takenactions on. For an entity the user has performed actions on before,action ranker 212 may predict the probability based on the user's watchbehavior, watch patterns, search behaviors, and availability of theentity.

Action ranker 212 may also use the effective time to determine howlikely the user will take the action, such as it may be more likely thata user will re-engage with an entity to perform an action if the usermore recently performed that action on the same entity. The effectivetime may be dependent on the type of entity. For example, effective timemay be defined as a function of last engaged time or availability changetime (new arrival, expiring soon, season premiere, and a manually-savedtime or followed time for the user). The effective time may also bebased on a number of unseen episodes for the specific user. In oneexample, if the user's favorite show or celebrity has new arrivals inthe video delivery service (e.g., a new episode or movie), the usersaved or watched half-way a show/movie recently, the user has been bingewatching a library show, action ranker 212 may generate a highprobability for the entity/action pair.

Action ranker 212 may use the context to determine probabilities thatthe user will take the action on the entity, such as the user may use acertain device to access the service at a certain time. The context maybe the user's location, time, device that the user is currently using,and the subscription package for the video delivery service.

Conventionally, when ranking content against each other, the system isconcerned with whether the user engages with the content. However,ranking actions takes the prediction one step further, not only isaction ranker 212 concerned about the content the user would engagewith, but also how the user would engage with the content. Therefore, inone embodiment, the predictor can explicitly tell the user the suggestedway of engagement with the entity.

The output of action ranker 212 may be probabilities for entities andeach associated action pairs. FIG. 5B depicts a table 550 of entitiesand actions that have been ranked according to one embodiment. Table 550may be stored in a database and accessed by action feed generator 108 togenerate a list of actions for entities for the action feed. A column552 lists the entities that were selected by candidate action generator210 and column 554 lists the actions that were selected for the entitiesby candidate action generator 210. Column 556 lists the probabilitiesgenerated by action ranker 212. Each show/action entity may be a row inthe table although this is not shown graphically. The probabilitiesindicate a probability the user would take an action over anotheraction. The probabilities may be based on all actions in the tables. Forexample, for the action Watch next episode for Show #1, it is 90%probable the user would take this action over all other actions (or agroup of actions) in the table.

Action Feed Filtering

The output of mixed ranker 524 is an action feed that includes a rankedlist of actions on entities. This may be considered an action feed 110that can be used by the video delivery service. For example, action feed110 may be surfaced to various interface positions at a client 104.Additionally, action feed 110 may be filtered to provide a drill-downinto different categories of actions. For example, the action feed maybe provided on a homepage for a user when the user logs into the videodelivery service. Also, action feed 110 may be filtered to only showactions for entities that are new to the user; that is, entities that auser has explicitly watched or added before and does not includecampaigns.

FIG. 6A depicts a more detailed example of action feed generator 108 fordisplaying action feed 110 according to one embodiment. An action feedtrigger 601 receives a real-time indication that the action feed shouldbe displayed on interface 112. For example, the trigger may be that auser has logged onto the video delivery service. Other triggers includethe user browsing to different pages, hubs, or sections of userinterface 112.

A filter 602 receives action feed 110 from mixed ranker 524 when thetrigger is detected. Filter 602 may also receive real-time informationfor a user, such as a user's context. For example, the context mayinclude the page of an interface the user is currently viewing, currentactions the user is performing, or other user information. The usercontext may be received from the trigger, from client 104, or derived(e.g., a time of day).

Filter 602 may then filter the action feed to select a portion of theactions based on the user's context. In one embodiment, filtering mayremove some actions that are higher ranked than others based on thefilter criteria. Although this type of filtering is described in otherembodiments, the action feed may select the top X actions from actionfeed 110. In one example, only one action is displayed per entity. Inthis example, X is a number equal to or less than the number of entitiesin the action feed. In another example, multiple actions may bedisplayed for one or more entities. In the second example, X is a numberequal to or less than the number of actions in the action feed.

Filter 602 may then generate a table that includes the selected actionfeed entities and actions. FIG. 6B depicts an example of a table 650that is used to store the selected actions according to one embodiment.As shown, table 650 includes the selected entities in a column 652 andalso the actions in a column 654. Because different actions arepossible, table 650 includes a link to the selected action/entitycombination in a column 656. For example, different actions may point todifferent episodes of a show. Depending on the action, the link pointsto the correct entity, such as the latest episode for a caught up showor the first episode for a library show.

In the example in table 650, the actions are listed from highestprobability to the lowest probability. For show #1, a link #1 includesinformation such that the next episode for show #1 that a user still hasnot watched is played. This link may be hardcoded to a specific episodeor the next episode may be determined dynamically when link #1 isselected. For show #2, a link #2 causes show #2 to be followed. For theDrama genre, a link #3 causes the newest release in the drama genre tobe played. For Actor #1, a link #4 causes the latest update (e.g., anepisode including the Actor #1) to be played.

Referring back to FIG. 6A, whatever actions that are selected by filter602 are then provided to display process 604. Display process 604 canthen dynamically display the action feed whether it is filtered or noton interface 112 of client 104. Display process 604 may dynamicallydisplay action feed 110 while the user navigates to different areas ofinterface 112 and different pages are displayed.

In one example, action feed 110 can be displayed on a homepage for theuser in interface 112. The homepage may be the first page of anapplication that a user sees when the user logs into the video deliveryservice. In one embodiment, this action feed is displayed in an area,such as the masthead or a prominent location on interface 112.Additionally, action feed 110 may also be provided on different trays,hubs, or pages of interface 112. For example, different filtered actionfeeds can be provided in different pages. Examples of pages include anew-for-you category that shows only actions that are new to the user.Display process 604 may also display slices of the action feed as theuser browses for something specific. For example, if the user navigatesto a movies page on interface 112, then the action feed can be filtereddown to only movie actions. Display process 604 can display these movieactions on the current page of the user.

Display process 604 may also display an action feed for continuous play.For example, when a user reaches the end of playback of a video, actionfeed trigger 601 receives the notification that playback is ending, anddisplay process 604 can select the next best action for the user todisplay on interface 112. This action could keep the user watchingwithout any explicit effort by the user and also suggest otheralternatives or pivots for the user to view. The pivots can becategorized similarly to the approach that generated the actions for thehomepage. When performing continuous play, the prior action isconsidered when generating and ranking the actions. If the user has beenviewing a lot of episodes in a row of a television show, then the actionshould be continue watching that television show as a top-rankedsuggested action.

Notifications may also be used when a top action is very relevant andpotentially time-sensitive, such as watching a live sporting event.Display process 604 may then raise a notification to the user ininterface 112. This may be in interface 112 and may also be through theoperating system such that this is a global notification for the user.

Interface and Action Feed Example

FIG. 7 depicts an example of action feed 110-1 being displayed on a userinterface 112 of client 104 according to one embodiment. Although thisuser interface is shown, it will be understood that users may navigateto other areas of an application being displayed in the user interfaceto display different versions of the action feed. In this version,interface 112 may display different categories 704-1-704-4 of videosfrom the video delivery service's video library. For example, differentcategories may include a lineup that shows top suggested actions for theuser, a television category, a movies category, a sports category, and anetworks category. Each category includes its own action feed. Althoughthese categories are listed, other categories may also be appreciated.

In one embodiment, a selection of category #1 is received using aselector 706. The selection causes display of action feed 110-1, whichincludes entities #1-#4 702-1-702-4 arranged in a predicted order foractions 708-1-708-4 for the entities. For example, at are shown in anorder from top to bottom. For example, entity 702-1 has the highestprobability the user will perform the associated action #1 708-1, entity702-2 has the next highest probability the user will perform theassociated action #1 708-2, etc. Also, other entities with associatedactions may also be included in action feed 110 after action #4 708-4,but are not shown.

When entities are shows, the shows may include a different number ofavailable or unwatched episodes. The associated action may suggest anepisode that has the highest probability the user might want to watchnext. Also, live videos may be blended with on demand videos in the sameaction feed 110-1. The ranking of actions allows the system to rank thelive videos with the on demand videos and provide a unified interfacewith both types of videos.

In one embodiment, action feed generator 108 uses table 550 shown inFIG. 5B to dynamically generate action feed 110-1 in interface 112. Forexample, action feed generator 108 determines how many spots in thecategory are available for action feed 110-1. The number of spots maydepend on the category or on the number of entities and associatedprobabilities in table 550. For example, action feed generator 108 mayselect each unique entity that is included in table 550. Then, actionfeed generator 108 selects the action for each unique entity that hasthe highest probability. Action feed generator 108 may also use othermethods to select the entities, such as selecting X number of entitiesthat have actions above a threshold.

Once selecting the entities, action feed generator 108 uses the links tothe content in table 650 of FIG. 6B to generate action feed 110. Forexample, the links are sent to client 104 and when an entity isselected, client 104 uses the link to request the associated entity withthe action. For example, the link not only specifies the entity, butalso the action. Link #1, #3, #4 will direct a user to a page where avideo is being played. Link #2 will direct a user to a page describingdetails of the show and a message indicating the future updates of theshow will be displayed in the user's action feed 110.

Method Flows

FIG. 8 depicts a simplified flowchart 800 of a method for generating anaction feed 110 according to one embodiment. At 802, action feedgenerator 108 sends content to users. At 804, action feed generator 108stores user behavior on the video delivery service based on the sendingof the content to user. The user behavior includes actions taken by theusers (or not taken) on the video delivery service.

Then, for each user, at 806, action feed generator 108 inputs the userbehavior, a user context, entity/relationship information, and campaigninformation into candidate action generator 210 to generate a set ofcandidate actions to be performed on a set of entities found on thevideo delivery service. At 808, action feed generator 108 inputs the setof candidate actions to be performed on the set of entities, the usercontext, and the user behavior into action ranker 212 to generateprobabilities for the set of actions to be performed on the set ofentities. As discussed above, the probability for an action indicatesthe probability the user would select that action when compared againstother actions in the set of actions to be performed on entities. At 810,information for the probabilities for the set of actions is stored in atable.

After generating the ranked action feed, FIG. 9 depicts a simplifiedflowchart 900 of a method for displaying action feed 110 according toone embodiment. At 902, action feed generator 108 receives a trigger forthe action feed. The trigger indicates the action feed should begenerated.

At 904, action feed generator 108 determines a user context. The usercontext may be based on real-time information for the user. At 906,action feed generator 108 selects actions for an action feed 110 basedon the ranking. For example, depending on the context, action feedgenerator 108 applies different filters to action feed 110. At 908,action feed generator 108 outputs action feed 110 to the users.

FIG. 10 depicts a simplified flowchart 1000 of a method for respondingto a selection of an action in action feed 110 according to oneembodiment. At 1002, action feed generator 108 receives a selection foran action on an entity in action feed 110. At 1004, action feedgenerator 108 determines a link to the action. For example, clientdevice 104 may send the link to the action in a request. The link mayhave been associated with the icon on the action feed that was selected.In other examples, action feed generator 108 determines the link oncethe request for the action is received for table 650 in FIG. 6B. At1006, action feed generator 108 performs the action. For example, if theaction is watch the next episode of a show, then action feed generator108 causes the next episode of the show to be played on video deliverysystem 106.

Feedback

When actions are provided to a user, feedback may be received and usedto improve the generation of future action feeds. Action feed generator108 receives the actions that a user takes. The feedback may also benegative feedback in that the user did not take an action that wassuggested. Positive feedback may be when the user actually takes anaction. The positive feedback may be binary in that the user took anaction or did not take an action, or it can be weighted by downstreamvalue/intensity of engagement. For example, the user may take an actionto start viewing a television show but then stop viewing the televisionshow a few minutes later in contrast to the user viewing every singleepisode of the season. Also, the negative feedback is when the userignores a recommended action or through explicit feedback such as theuser selects a dismiss or not interested input. The feedback informationis then provided in the user behavior database for future use ingenerating the action feed.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the action feed can be used to suggest actions for a user.This is different from suggesting just videos. The actions take therecommendations a step further to suggest what the user could do withthe entities. Additionally, the ranking process ranks the actionsagainst each other. This allows the recommendations to use user behaviorwith more granularity to provide more accurate recommendations.

Further, the actions allow the entities to be ranked from multiplesources, such as linear video in addition to on-demand video.Additionally, campaigns can also be integrated into the ranking or theaction feed.

The detection of patterns in historical user behavior can then be usedto more highly rank actions that fit the user's behavior. As a result,fewer actions over entities can be recommended, as opposed to the entityitself that the video delivery service knows is related to a video thatthe user has previously watched. This also allows context to beprovided, such as if the user watches news in the morning, then actionsover the news content can be provided to the user.

System Overview

Features and aspects as disclosed herein may be implemented inconjunction with a video streaming system 1100 in communication withmultiple client devices via one or more communication networks as shownin FIG. 11. Aspects of the video streaming system 1100 are describedmerely to provide an example of an application for enabling distributionand delivery of content prepared according to the present disclosure. Itshould be appreciated that the present technology is not limited tostreaming video applications, and may be adapted for other applicationsand delivery mechanisms.

In one embodiment, a media program provider may include a library ofmedia programs. For example, the media programs may be aggregated andprovided through a site (e.g., Website), application, or browser. A usercan access the media program provider's site or application and requestmedia programs. The user may be limited to requesting only mediaprograms offered by the media program provider.

In system 1100, video data may be obtained from one or more sources forexample, from a video source 1110, for use as input to a video contentserver 1102. The input video data may comprise raw or edited frame-basedvideo data in any suitable digital format, for example, Moving PicturesExperts Group (MPEG)-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, H.264/Advanced VideoCoding (AVC), High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), or other format. Inan alternative, a video may be provided in a non-digital format andconverted to digital format using a scanner and/or transcoder. The inputvideo data may comprise video clips or programs of various types, forexample, television episodes, motion pictures, and other contentproduced as primary content of interest to consumers. The video data mayalso include audio or only audio may be used.

The video streaming system 1100 may include one or more computer serversor modules 1102, 1109, and/or 1107 distributed over one or morecomputers. Each server 1102, 1109, 1107 may include, or may beoperatively coupled to, one or more data stores 1104, for exampledatabases, indexes, files, or other data structures. A video contentserver 1102 may access a data store (not shown) of various videosegments. The video content server 1102 may serve the video segments asdirected by a user interface controller communicating with a clientdevice. As used herein, a video segment refers to a definite portion offrame-based video data, such as may be used in a streaming video sessionto view a television episode, motion picture, recorded live performance,or other video content.

In some embodiments, a video advertising server 1104 may access a datastore of relatively short videos (e.g., 10 second, 30 second, or 60second video advertisements) configured as advertising for a particularadvertiser or message. The advertising may be provided for an advertiserin exchange for payment of some kind, or may comprise a promotionalmessage for the system 1100, a public service message, or some otherinformation. The video advertising server 1104 may serve the videoadvertising segments as directed by a user interface controller (notshown).

The video streaming system 1100 also may include action feed generator108.

The video streaming system 1100 may further include an integration andstreaming component 1107 that integrates video content and videoadvertising into a streaming video segment. For example, streamingcomponent 1107 may be a content server or streaming media server. Acontroller (not shown) may determine the selection or configuration ofadvertising in the streaming video based on any suitable algorithm orprocess. The video streaming system 1100 may include other modules orunits not depicted in FIG. 11, for example administrative servers,commerce servers, network infrastructure, advertising selection engines,and so forth.

The video streaming system 1100 may connect to a data communicationnetwork 1112. A data communication network 1112 may comprise a localarea network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), for example, theInternet, a telephone network, a wireless cellular telecommunicationsnetwork (WCS) 1114, or some combination of these or similar networks.

One or more client devices 1120 may be in communication with the videostreaming system 1100, via the data communication network 1112 and/orother network 1114. Such client devices may include, for example, one ormore laptop computers 1120-1, desktop computers 1120-2, “smart” mobilephones 1120-3, tablet devices 1120-4, network-enabled televisions1120-5, or combinations thereof, via a router 1118 for a LAN, via a basestation 1117 for a wireless telephony network 1114, or via some otherconnection. In operation, such client devices 1120 may send and receivedata or instructions to the system 1100, in response to user inputreceived from user input devices or other input. In response, the system1100 may serve video segments and metadata from the data store 1104responsive to selection of media programs to the client devices 1120.Client devices 1120 may output the video content from the streamingvideo segment in a media player using a display screen, projector, orother video output device, and receive user input for interacting withthe video content.

Distribution of audio-video data may be implemented from streamingcomponent 1107 to remote client devices over computer networks,telecommunications networks, and combinations of such networks, usingvarious methods, for example streaming. In streaming, a content serverstreams audio-video data continuously to a media player componentoperating at least partly on the client device, which may play theaudio-video data concurrently with receiving the streaming data from theserver. Although streaming is discussed, other methods of delivery maybe used. The media player component may initiate play of the video dataimmediately after receiving an initial portion of the data from thecontent provider. Traditional streaming techniques use a single providerdelivering a stream of data to a set of end users. High bandwidths andprocessing power may be required to deliver a single stream to a largeaudience, and the required bandwidth of the provider may increase as thenumber of end users increases.

Streaming media can be delivered on-demand or live. Streaming enablesimmediate playback at any point within the file. End-users may skipthrough the media file to start playback or change playback to any pointin the media file. Hence, the end-user does not need to wait for thefile to progressively download. Typically, streaming media is deliveredfrom a few dedicated servers having high bandwidth capabilities via aspecialized device that accepts requests for video files, and withinformation about the format, bandwidth and structure of those files,delivers just the amount of data necessary to play the video, at therate needed to play it. Streaming media servers may also account for thetransmission bandwidth and capabilities of the media player on thedestination client. Streaming component 1107 may communicate with clientdevice 1120 using control messages and data messages to adjust tochanging network conditions as the video is played. These controlmessages can include commands for enabling control functions such asfast forward, fast reverse, pausing, or seeking to a particular part ofthe file at the client.

Since streaming component 1107 transmits video data only as needed andat the rate that is needed, precise control over the number of streamsserved can be maintained. The user will not be able to view high datarate videos over a lower data rate transmission medium. However,streaming media servers (1) provide users random access to the videofile, (2) allow monitoring of who is viewing what video programs and howlong they are watched, (3) use transmission bandwidth more efficiently,since only the amount of data required to support the viewing experienceis transmitted, and (4) the video file is not stored in the user'scomputer, but discarded by the media player, thus allowing more controlover the content.

Streaming component 1107 may use TCP-based protocols, such as HTTP andReal-time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). Streaming component 1107 can alsodeliver live webcasts and can multicast, which allows more than oneclient to tune into a single stream, thus saving bandwidth. Streamingmedia players may not rely on buffering the whole video to providerandom access to any point in the media program. Instead, this isaccomplished through the use of control messages transmitted from themedia player to the streaming media server. Another protocol used forstreaming is hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) live streaming (HLS).The HLS protocol delivers video over HTTP via a playlist of smallsegments that are made available in a variety of bitrates typically fromone or more content delivery networks (CDNs). This allows a media playerto switch both bitrates and content sources on a segment-by-segmentbasis. The switching helps compensate for network bandwidth variancesand also infrastructure failures that may occur during playback of thevideo.

The delivery of video content by streaming may be accomplished under avariety of models. In one model, the user pays for the viewing of videoprograms, for example, using a fee for access to the library of mediaprograms or a portion of restricted media programs, or using apay-per-view service. In another model widely adopted by broadcasttelevision shortly after its inception, sponsors pay for thepresentation of the media program in exchange for the right to presentadvertisements during or adjacent to the presentation of the program. Insome models, advertisements are inserted at predetermined times in avideo program, which times may be referred to as “ad slots” or “adbreaks.” With streaming video, the media player may be configured sothat the client device cannot play the video without also playingpredetermined advertisements during the designated ad slots.

Referring to FIG. 12, a diagrammatic view of an apparatus 1200 forviewing video content and advertisements is illustrated. In selectedembodiments, the apparatus 1200 may include a processor (CPU) 1202operatively coupled to a processor memory 1204, which holds binary-codedfunctional modules for execution by the processor 1202. Such functionalmodules may include an operating system 1206 for handling systemfunctions such as input/output and memory access, a browser 1208 todisplay web pages, and media player 125 for playing video. The modulesmay further include modules to generate interface 112 and action feed110. The memory 1204 may hold additional modules not shown in FIG. 12,for example modules for performing other operations described elsewhereherein.

A bus 1214 or other communication component may support communication ofinformation within the apparatus 1200. The processor 1202 may be aspecialized or dedicated microprocessor configured to perform particulartasks in accordance with the features and aspects disclosed herein byexecuting machine-readable software code defining the particular tasks.Processor memory 1204 (e.g., random access memory (RAM) or other dynamicstorage device) may be connected to the bus 1214 or directly to theprocessor 1202, and store information and instructions to be executed bya processor 1202. The memory 1204 may also store temporary variables orother intermediate information during execution of such instructions.

A computer-readable medium in a storage device 1224 may be connected tothe bus 1214 and store static information and instructions for theprocessor 1202; for example, the storage device (CRM) 1224 may store themodules 1206, 1208, 1210 and 1212 when the apparatus 1200 is poweredoff, from which the modules may be loaded into the processor memory 1204when the apparatus 1200 is powered up. The storage device 1224 mayinclude a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium holdinginformation, instructions, or some combination thereof, for exampleinstructions that when executed by the processor 1202, cause theapparatus 1200 to be configured to perform one or more operations of amethod as described herein.

A communication interface 1216 may also be connected to the bus 1214.The communication interface 1216 may provide or support two-way datacommunication between the apparatus 1200 and one or more externaldevices, e.g., the streaming system 400, optionally via a router/modem1226 and a wired or wireless connection. In the alternative, or inaddition, the apparatus 1200 may include a transceiver 1218 connected toan antenna 1229, through which the apparatus 1200 may communicatewirelessly with a base station for a wireless communication system orwith the router/modem 1226. In the alternative, the apparatus 1200 maycommunicate with a video streaming system 1100 via a local area network,virtual private network, or other network. In another alternative, theapparatus 1200 may be incorporated as a module or component of thesystem 1100 and communicate with other components via the bus 1214 or bysome other modality.

The apparatus 1200 may be connected (e.g., via the bus 1214 and graphicsprocessing unit 1220) to a display unit 1228. A display 1228 may includeany suitable configuration for displaying information to an operator ofthe apparatus 1200. For example, a display 1228 may include or utilize aliquid crystal display (LCD), touchscreen LCD (e.g., capacitivedisplay), light emitting diode (LED) display, projector, or otherdisplay device to present information to a user of the apparatus 1200 ina visual display.

One or more input devices 1230 (e.g., an alphanumeric keyboard,microphone, keypad, remote controller, game controller, camera or cameraarray) may be connected to the bus 1214 via a user input port 1222 tocommunicate information and commands to the apparatus 1200. In selectedembodiments, an input device 1230 may provide or support control overthe positioning of a cursor. Such a cursor control device, also called apointing device, may be configured as a mouse, a trackball, a track pad,touch screen, cursor direction keys or other device for receiving ortracking physical movement and translating the movement into electricalsignals indicating cursor movement. The cursor control device may beincorporated into the display unit 1228, for example using a touchsensitive screen. A cursor control device may communicate directioninformation and command selections to the processor 1202 and controlcursor movement on the display 1228. A cursor control device may havetwo or more degrees of freedom, for example allowing the device tospecify cursor positions in a plane or three-dimensional space.

Particular embodiments may be implemented in a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium for use by or in connection with theinstruction execution system, apparatus, system, or machine. Thecomputer-readable storage medium contains instructions for controlling acomputer system to perform a method described by particular embodiments.The computer system may include one or more computing devices. Theinstructions, when executed by one or more computer processors, may beconfigured to perform that which is described in particular embodiments.

As used in the description herein and throughout the claims that follow,“a”, “an”, and “the” includes plural references unless the contextclearly dictates otherwise. Also, as used in the description herein andthroughout the claims that follow, the meaning of “in” includes “in” and“on” unless the context clearly dictates otherwise.

The above description illustrates various embodiments along withexamples of how aspects of particular embodiments may be implemented.The above examples and embodiments should not be deemed to be the onlyembodiments, and are presented to illustrate the flexibility andadvantages of particular embodiments as defined by the following claims.Based on the above disclosure and the following claims, otherarrangements, embodiments, implementations and equivalents may beemployed without departing from the scope hereof as defined by theclaims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: generating, by a computingdevice, a set of actions for a set of entities found on a video deliverysystem based on information for user behavior of a user on the videodelivery system; generating, by the computing device, probabilities forthe set of actions for the set of entities based on the set of actionsfor the set of entities and the user behavior, wherein a probability foran action indicates the probability the user would select that actionfor an entity when compared against other actions in the set of actionsfor the set of entities; selecting, by the computing device, an actionfeed based on the probabilities for the set of actions, the action feedincluding at least a portion of the set of actions for the set ofentities; and outputting, by the computing device, the action feed tothe client for display on an interface, wherein an action on an entityin the action feed is performed by the video delivery system whenselected by the user on the interface displayed on the client.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein generating the set of actions for the set ofentities is based on a probability the user would re-engage with the setof entities.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the set ofactions for the set of entities comprises: determining a first candidateset of entities the user has engaged within a first time period usingthe user behavior; determining a second candidate set of entities theuser has not engaged within a second time period using the userbehavior, the second candidate set of entities determined to be relatedto entities the user engaged; and selecting entities in the firstcandidate set of entities and the second candidate set of entities toinclude in the set of entities.
 4. The method of claim 3, furthercomprising: determining if a probability the user would engage with thefirst candidate set of entities and the second candidate set of entitiesis above a threshold; and including entities in the first candidate setof entities and the second candidate set of entities in the set ofentities that have the probability that meets the threshold.
 5. Themethod of claim 1, wherein generating probabilities for the set ofactions for the set of entities is based on a probability the user wouldselect an action for an entity.
 6. The method of claim 5, whereingenerating probabilities for the set of actions for the set of entitiescomprises: using actions the user selected and actions for entities theuser did not select in the user behavior to rank the actions for theentities.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the set ofactions for the set of entities comprises: determining entities in anentity relationship graph that defines possible entities andrelationships between the entities, wherein the entities are availablefor selection by the user on the video delivery system, and selectingthe set of actions for the set of entities from the entities in theentity relationship graph that are available for selection by the user.8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating probabilities for the setof actions for the set of entities comprises: receiving a set of firstactions for manually added entities and a set of second actions forengaged entities, the manually added entities being explicitly engagedby the user in the user behavior and the engaged entities beingimplicitly engaged by the user in the user behavior; and ranking the setof first actions for manually added entities and the set of secondactions for engaged entities into a set of third actions based onprobabilities for the set of first actions and the set of secondactions.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein generating probabilities forthe set of actions for the set of entities comprises: receiving a set offourth actions for discovered entities other than the engaged entitiesand manually added entities, the discovered entities being determinedbased on a relevance between the engaged entities and the differententities; and ranking the set of fourth actions for the discoveredentities based on probabilities for the set of fourth actions.
 10. Themethod of claim 9, wherein generating probabilities for the set ofactions for the set of entities comprises: receiving a set of fifthactions for a set of campaigns, the set of campaigns promoting campaignentities; and ranking the set of fifth actions for the campaign entitiesin the set of campaigns based on probabilities for the set of fifthactions.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein generating probabilitiesfor the set of actions for the set of entities comprises: ranking theset of fifth actions based on a campaign urgency; and ranking the set offifth actions based on entity availability on the video delivery systemfor each campaign and the campaign urgency based on probabilities forthe set of fifth actions.
 12. The method of claim 11, wherein generatingprobabilities for the set of actions for the set of entities comprises:receiving the ranked set of third actions and the ranked set of fourthactions; and ranking the ranked set of third actions and the rankedfourth actions together into a set of sixth actions based onprobabilities for the ranked set of third actions and the ranked set offourth actions.
 13. The method of claim 12, wherein generatingprobabilities for the set of actions for the set of entities comprises:receiving the set of sixth actions and the ranked fifth actions; andranking the set of sixth actions and the ranked fifth actions togetherinto a set of seventh actions based on probabilities for the set ofsixth actions and the ranked set of fifth actions, wherein the set ofseventh actions is used to select the action feed.
 14. The method ofclaim 1, wherein generating probabilities for the set of actions for theset of entities comprises: using a real-time context associated with theuser to generate the probabilities for the set of actions for the set ofentities.
 15. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting the action feedcomprises: filtering the set of actions for the set of entities based onfilter criteria to select the at least the portion of the set of actionsfor the set of entities.
 16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:receiving a selection of an action in the action feed; and using a linkfor the action to perform the action on the video delivery system. 17.The method of claim 1, further comprising: sending videos to the userthat is using the video delivery system on a client; and receiving theuser behavior for the user, wherein the user behavior includes actionstaken by the user on the video delivery system.
 18. The method of claim1, wherein: generating the set of actions for the set of entities isperformed by a first predictor, and generating probabilities for the setof actions for the set of entities is performed by a second predictorthat is different from the first predictor.
 19. A non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium containing instructions, that whenexecuted, control a computer system to be configured for: generating aset of actions for a set of entities found on a video delivery systembased on information for user behavior of a user on the video deliverysystem; generating probabilities for the set of actions for the set ofentities based on the set of actions for the set of entities and theuser behavior, wherein a probability for an action indicates theprobability the user would select that action for an entity whencompared against other actions in the set of actions for the set ofentities; selecting an action feed based on the probabilities for theset of actions, the action feed including at least a portion of the setof actions for the set of entities; and outputting the action feed tothe client for display on an interface, wherein an action on an entityin the action feed is performed by the video delivery system whenselected by the user on the interface displayed on the client.
 20. Anapparatus comprising: one or more computer processors; and anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions,that when executed, control the one or more computer processors to beconfigured for: generating a set of actions for a set of entities foundon a video delivery system based on information for user behavior of auser on the video delivery system; generating probabilities for the setof actions for the set of entities based on the set of actions for theset of entities and the user behavior, wherein a probability for anaction indicates the probability the user would select that action foran entity when compared against other actions in the set of actions forthe set of entities; selecting an action feed based on the probabilitiesfor the set of actions, the action feed including at least a portion ofthe set of actions for the set of entities; and outputting the actionfeed to the client for display on an interface, wherein an action on anentity in the action feed is performed by the video delivery system whenselected by the user on the interface displayed on the client.